This
elegant little book should be completely unnecessary in an era when science
and technology are popularly supposed to rule our lives, and dictate the
progress of culture and society. Karlen’s book is, instead, a neat little
primer on the life cycle of a tiny micro-organism - one amongst millions
- that pushed its way into our consciousness for a brief moment.

While West
Nile Virus might be the disease du jour right now, not long ago it was
Lyme Disease, a debilitating affliction that was all the more sinister
for its tendency to strike in affluent suburbs, especially those being
built in the fashionable intersections where city and country meet, and
at hikers and hunters in leisurely, expensive pursuit of nature. The cause
of Lyme Disease is ultimately - after the disease has been tracked past
the deer and rodents that act as hosts for the tick that gives the bite
that passes the disease onto us poor humans - a tiny bacterium called Borrelia
burgdorferi, a remarkably hardy little creature that appears under
the microscope as a pale, rather attractively-shaped spiral. With familiarity
and some degree of fondness, Karlen nicknames his subject Bb.

Karlen
coyly calls his book a biography, giving him a chance to ruminate on the
implications of writing the life story of a creature tinier than a dust
mote, and whose span on the earth goes unnoticed by us unless we become
ill. He takes us on a tour of Bb’s habitats, introduces us to its
relatives, and narrates a parallel story of the scientists who had to struggle
for centuries, waiting for the invention of microscopes and modern biology,
discarding one theory after another and slowly, painfully, pulling together
disparate findings before finally tracking down Bb.

Karlen
ends his story not with Bb’s apprehension and punishment, but with
the sober observation that creatures like Bb are as much a part
of nature’s vocabulary as we are - perhaps more so, as his description
of its survival mechanisms demonstrate. As a primer on science, medicine,
biology, nature and ecology, Karlen’s book describes the pitiless wonder
and of the world we live in, and the breathtaking logic we’ve only begun
to glimpse in nature, with rare economy.